A referendum to increase the university’s student activities fee by $5.28 passed Monday night, SGA officials announced along with this year’s election results.
“I’m glad students were willing to pay to increase funds for programming and help themselves out,” said Patrick Ronk, who was elected Monday to a second term as Student Government Association president. “It’s great we have an educated student body who is willing to pay a little more to have more programs and more events.”
Of about 27,000 undergraduate students at this university, 4,256 voted in the SGA elections. Of those, 2,164 students voted in favor of the student activities fee increase, 1,161 voted against it and 930 abstained, said Emily Williams, SGA election board chairwoman.
The next step for the fee increase proposal is the Student Fee Review Committee. Should the proposal pass when the committee meets in late October or early November, the increase would take effect for the 2016-17 school year, Ronk said.
“If students pass a referendum saying they want this fee increase, there’s no reason it shouldn’t pass,” said Brian Nowak, a senior finance and information systems major and SGA financial affairs vice president.
Unmet funding needs expressed by student groups, including Student Entertainment Events, prompted the referendum, Nowak said.
Stamp Student Union will no longer fund the group’s Homecoming Comedy Show, said SEE President Isha Aggarwal, and the money garnered from the fee increase would help SEE continue to provide “current and relevant” entertainment.
“We had help from the Union to support the homecoming show up until it ended this year,” she said. “We were hoping to be sustainable on our own, but because talent and production costs increase, we aren’t self-sufficient yet. … With this increase, we weren’t looking to take money from the students, but keep up with what the students expect from us currently.”
The SGA projects the student fee increase would raise funding for student groups by between $80,000 and $90,000, Nowak said, with an additional $48,500 going to SEE.
Of that boost, Aggarwal said, $5,000 would go to musical arts, $3,500 to film screenings and $40,000 to the Homecoming Comedy Show.
Some students, however, were against the fee increase.
“It’s full of s—,” senior American studies major Rafael Powell said. “Tuition already increases every year — what more do we have to keep giving to this university?”
Nowak’s job involves allocating $470,000 annually to student groups, which apply monthly for funds. There have been months when he’s had to cut groups’ budgets by up to 90 percent, he said.
George Kaplan, a junior involved with the Terrapin Beats Society, said his group’s budget was once cut by 40 percent, meaning they had to seek alternative funds to afford crowd barriers and lights for one of their events.
“There’s simply not enough money to go around,” Nowak said. “It’s an ECON200 problem — we don’t have the supply to meet the demand.”
CORRECTION: Due to a reporting error, a previous version of this story stated that the Student Activities Fee increase would raise funding for student groups by between $80,000 and $90,000, $48,500 of which would go to SEE. The $48,500 to SEE is an additional sum that is not reflected in the $80,000 to $90,000 total.
